PROJECT ANTHRAX & THE COVER-UP

"... 'It was his own fault,' I thought," said Tom Ivins. "'What he did, he screwed himself up. He got involved with the wrong people.' ... "http://www.wcpo.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=d3774239-744f-4908-904c-d9cf8b55e154

At least one of the anthrax mailings came from overseas (from the text below: "In November 2001, the CDC's web site in Atlanta confirmed that a tainted letter had been sent from Switzerland to Chile, so neither of the key suspects could have possibly acted alone. ...") Manipulation of limited hang-outs allows the FBI and controlled media to "clear" Hatfill - with fear of a libel suit ensuring that the press is reluctant to investigate him - but there is still a mountain of suppressed evidence that damns the now wealthy virologist. The convenient "suicide" of Bruce E. Ivins, the sacrificial goat, takes the heat off of Hatfill and others completely, but he remains an obvious perpetrator, and the others will never be exposed ... others who've made careers of mass murder with state sanction ...

The West Nile Virus outbreak of 1999 made 67 people in New York City ill, and brought with it endemic anxiety. But the anthrax mailings two years later brought death and high anxiety. Emergency measures in a jingoistic package, under consideration in the House of Representatives, arrived at the same time as the Ames strain and the emergency measures floated through Congress on a cloud of lethal white powder.

Right-wing propagandists stepped up to finger the obvious culprit. Laurie Mylroie explained to CNN, "it takes a highly sophisticated agency to produce anthrax in the lethal form. Not many parties can do that." Saddam Hussein "continues his part of the war in the form of terrorism. It is unlikely that anthrax will remain in letters. It is likely that it will be used in the subway of a city, or in the ventilation system of a U.S. building. Saddam wants revenge against us. He wants to do to the U.S. what we've done to Iraq."

This cover story didn't hold up under the tension of scientific deduction, though. The true culprit - it emerged after Dr. Barbara Rosenberg of the Federation of American Scientists pestered the Bureau with facts and public exposure - was an obscure, right-wing biochemical warfare "counterterrorist," withal. The serial killer took his training at the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland and other civilian-run, federal facilities, also a two-year fellowship from the National Research Council, the country's leading CBW defense lab. He moved on to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases - USAMRIID - at Fort Detrick. He experimented with biological responses to filoviridae, the family of viruses that transmit Ebola. In September 1999 - as the Jerry Hauer-SAIC-Fort Detrick-USAMRIID West Nile Virus was taking hold in New York - the terrorist began working at the very same lab.

By March of 2002, it was clear that the FBI was protecting him. Spokesmen for the Bureau were evasive about the source of the anthrax but it gradually emerged, by process of elimination and genetic analysis, that the culprit worked at the same classified USAMRIID facility in Maryland that employed Jerry "West Nile" Hauer.

PROJECT COAST

CounterPunch commented a month later on geographic connections that bore directly on the case: "The South African media [have] been abuzz with details of that nation's former biological warfare program and its links to the CIA. The South African bio-chemical war program was code-named Project Coast and was centered at the Roodeplat Research Laboratories north of Pretoria. The lab maintained links to the US biowarfare facility at Fort Detrick and Britain's Porton Down Laboratory.

The head of the South African program, Dr. Wouter Basson, was reportedly offered a job with the CIA in the United States after the fall of the apartheid regime. According to former South African National Intelligence Agency deputy director Michael Kennedy, when Basson refused the offer, the CIA threatened to kill him.

The U.S. pressured President Mandela to relinquish Basson's research files, and they were transported to Fort Detrick.1

The FBI pushed on with the investigation but withheld from public disclosure that the terrorist had worked with Wouter Basson in South Africa, and that he'd been a member of the South African Nazi Party.

But some of Hatfill's closest friends maintained his innocence. Stan Bedlington, a veteran CIA agent, told the Washington Post that he'd known Hatfill for several years: "They were drinking buddies who'd both been involved in anti-terrorism efforts long before the World Trade Center crumbled. Now, suddenly, people were saying that Hatfill could be responsible for the country's first case of domestic bioterrorism, a release of lethal anthrax through the mail that had left five people dead and 17 others infected in the fall of 2001."

Bedlington had fond memories of Hatfill, though he hadn't seen him for some time. They'd met at a Baltimore symposium on bioterrorism. Bedlington had spent six years bent over a senior analyst desk at the CIA's Counter-terrorism Center. Hatfill was a virologist at the U.S. Army-SAIC Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, "where he'd begun making a name for himself preaching the dangers of a bioterror attack. Soon they ran into each other again at Charley's Place in McLean, then a favorite hangout for the U.S. intelligence community." Hatfill "showed up there with men whom Bedlington recognized as bodyguards for Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar bin Sultan."2

To respond to intrusive media, Hatfill's friend Pat Clawson served as spokesman. Clawson was a radio executive who worked with Iran-contra's Oliver North.

Clawson, reports the Baltimore Sun, was a "former CNN reporter who has known Hatfill socially for six years, said he and Hatfill are part of a group of friends who visited a house in the Virginia mountains near Shenandoah National Park in October for a weekend of skeet-shooting and socializing. The visit, in the middle of that month, came at the peak of anthrax hysteria, Clawson said. He told Hatfill that a few weeks earlier he had opened a vitriolic letter addressed to Oliver North, whose radio program is produced by Clawson's employer, Radio America. White powder had spilled from the envelope, which Clawson discarded"3

After Stephen J. Hatfill was named as the FBI's leading suspect, the same ultracon media opinion-shapers who had immediately blamed Saddam Hussein now hustled to Hatfill's defense. Rupert Murdoch's Evening Standard opined that his status as "interesting" to federal inevestigators "inspired a mini-industry of speculation that he may somehow be implicated in last fall's deadly anthrax attacks. [But] much of that speculation pretends to be something more: certainty of his guilt, and certainty that in every nook and cranny of his life must be found some blot or scar or mark of the devil that proves his guilt"4

A peek at a few of those nooks and crannies are proof of Hatfill's guilt:

• Bloodhounds found him of some interest after snuffling letter inside ofenvelope put there by Hatfill, preserved in a hermetically-sealed bag. Thehounds responded to him alone.

• A return address on one of the anthrax-bearing envelopes was Greendale,Rhodesia. Hatfill lived in Greendale.

• The neo-fascist Selous Scouts in Rhodesia spread anthrax. Hatfill was amember of the Scouts at the time of the contagion's spread.

• Hatfill had no fit alibi for the days of the anthrax mailings.

• Hatfill's PhD was forged. He was caught lying on his resumé.

• He failed a CIA lie-detector test regarding his activities in Rhodesiabefore the anthrax attacks. He failed a lie detector test afterwardconcerning his involvement in them.

Some of most damaging evidence was discovered in ponds recently searched near his home. Items pulled from the mud included a clear box with insert holes for rubber gloves to protect someone working with toxic materials. Also recovered were glass vials in plastic wrap, and gloves.5

One wonders which expletive David Kay, the SAIC vice president and Hatfill'sboss, whispered to himself the moment he heard that these items had beenfound not to mention a positive lab test for traces of anthrax FBI technicians detected on these objects, later changed to "inconclusive."6 But then, Kay was out of the country, conducting a WMD "search" of his own

" ... As it happens, one of the Scouts' favored tactics was the mailing of anthrax spores, embedded in the glue on envelope flaps. ... "

The epidemic swept through Zimbabwe (the former British colony of Southern Rhodesia) in the late 1970s. It killed 180 people, infected over 10,000, devastated livestock, brought with it economic disaster and widespread hunger ... but not throughout Zimbabwe indiscriminately, as one might expect. Only in black neighborhoods.

This epidemic was respectful of gated white communities and politely kept out.1

Stephen Hatfill signed on with the Rhodesian Special Air Service (SAS) and the Selous Scouts, a counter-insurgency death squad that enforced apartheid rule, before arriving at the Godfrey Huggins School of Medicine.

Some of the faculty were curious why the Yank would stoop to studying at a backwater academy like Huggins.

His admission to the school was arranged by Robert Burns Symington, an anatomy professor and devoted neo-Nazi. "Symington is strongly believed to have worked with the Ian Smith-led white supremacist regime on its biological warfare project," Africa's Sunday Mirror reported in 2002.

"The Zimbabwe authorities have since established that [Smith's] security forces, particularly the much feared Selous Scouts, stealthily distributed the deadly anthrax spore among the hungry cattle of the Rhodesian Tribal Trust Lands, where most Africans lived, and seeded cholera into the rivers."

STURM UND DRANG (UND JURMS)

After the war, a former senior officer of the Rhodesian security force admitted, "it is true that anthrax was used in an experimental role and the idea came from the Army Psychological Operations." Guerillas were scapegoated for the outbreak.2

As it happens, one of the Scout's favored tactics was the mailing of anthrax spores, embedded in the glue on envelope flaps.3

Hatfill … you may know the type. A student at the medical school's radiation oncology department recalls that he sported a 9mm pistol and boasted of past paramilitary glories in Vietnam and Zimbabwe.4

In 1984, he moved on to study at South African medical schools and joined the military. While in the area, Hatfill befriended Eugene Terre Blanche, leader of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, the South African Nazi Party.5

After a year-long tour in Anarctica, he pressed on to the States and found employment at the National Institutes of Health. "The PhD certificate he submitted to NIH could have easily been tracked back by authorities and exposed as a forgery," Marilyn Thompson, author of The Killer Strain: Anthrax and a Government Exposed, explained in a blogged Q&A hosted by UCLA's School of Public Health in 2003, "but it was overlooked and Hatfill's credentials helped him gain access to sensitive government agencies.

"USAMRIID allowed him in as a contract researcher."6

The first casualty of the anthrax mailings was Bob Stevens, a photo editor at a tabloid that had run an article blasting the Saudi royals" … Hatfill's friend Prince Bandar, for instance.

From the CDC report: "On October 4, 2001, we confirmed the first bio-terrorism-related anthrax case identified in the United States is a resident of Palm Beach County, Florida. Epidemiologic investigation indicated that exposure occurred at the workplace through intentionally contaminated mail."7

It is within the univserse of possibility that 911 hijackers Mohammed Atta and Ahmed Alhanzawi were among the first to come into contact with the spores, despite FBI denials. These have not held up well against the fusillade of questions from the press.

In March 2002, the New York Times reported that Atta and his entourage "identified themselves as pilots when they came to the emergency room of Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last June. One had an ugly, dark lesion on his leg," and "in October, a pharmacist in Delray Beach, Fla., said he had told the F.B.I. that two of the hijackers, Mohamad Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, came into the pharmacy looking for something to treat irritations on Mr. Atta's hands."

Dr. Christos Tsonas thought Alhanzawi's wound curious, but cleaned it and prescribed medication. "After Sept. 11, when federal investigators found the medicine among the possessions of one of the hijackers, Ahmed Alhaznawi, Dr. Tsonas reviewed the case and arrived at a new diagnosis." The lesion "was consistent with cutaneous anthrax.'" Dr. Thomas Inglesby of John Hopkins, and Dr. Tara O'Toole, assistant secretary for health and safety at the Energy Department, sided with Dr. Tsonas.

Thompson followed every step in the Bureau's investigation, and she finds it probable that Atta and Alhaznawi had some contact with anthrax spores:

"The FBI contends that it pursued a hijacker connection in the early days and became convinced that they were not involved in these mailings - mainly because the anthrax strain used was a military research strain. Many people in Florida, however, who know about the hijackers' movements in that part of the country in the months before 9/11, do not believe the FBI pursued this with enough vigor..."

The Times: "In an interview, Dr. O'Toole said that after consulting with additional medical experts on the Alhaznawi case, she was `more persuaded than ever' that the diagnosis of cutaneous anthrax was correct ..."

It has been widely reported that Mohammed Atta's cell took flight school training in Boca Raton, not far from American Media, Inc., where Stevens worked, and rented apartments from the wife of an editor of The Sun, published by AMI.8

The mailings continued after the fall of the towers. The Times: "They would probably have needed an accomplice to mail the tainted letters.... The four recovered anthrax letters were postmarked on Sept. 18 and Oct. 9 in Trenton."9

But the mailings weren't confined by domestic borders. In November 2001, the CDC's web site in Atlanta confirmed that a tainted letter had been sent from Switzerland to Chile. Dr. Antonio Banfi, a pediatrician at a children's hospital in Santiago, received the letter. He suspected that something was amiss because it had been postmarked in Zurich but had a Florida return address.10

In 2003, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports, Maureen Stevens, the widow of the first victim, filed a wrongful-death suit that "could embarrass the U.S. government and provide insight into the ongoing investigation of the fall 2001 bioterrorism attacks."

The "embarrassing" suit held that anthrax spores "were known to be missing from an Army laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., as early as 1992," and that the litigants "accuse the government of failing to adequately secure them. 'The bottom line is that a lot of our [FOIA] requests were not acknowledged or were not answered.'"11

Maureen Stevens' lawsuit was filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court. It named Ft. Detrick-USAMRIID, Battelle Memorial Institute, other possible sources of the anthrax - and BioPort Corp., of Lansing, Mich., a vaccine manufacturer.

The name BioPort is synonymous with mismanagement and contaminated product.

The company was founded on June 22, 1995 by Yoav Stern, a former avionics system officer specializing in F-15, A-4, Mirage and Kfir fighter jets for the Israeli Air Force. He was also commander of a flight training unit, and a deputy squadron commander. The BioPort web site reports that one Zive R. Nedivi has been the CEO, president and a director of the company since June 1995. Mr. Nedivi also served in the Israeli Air Force and was the founder "of the predecessor of the company, an indirectly wholly-owned subsidiary of Rada Electronic Industries Ltd."12

Also on Bioport's board of directors:

Niv Harizman: A director of the Company since December 1997. From January 1998 on, Harizman was a principal with BT Alex. Brown Incorporated, the investment banking subsidiary of Bankers Trust New York Corporation. From June 1996 until January 1998, Mr. Harizman was a Vice President with Alex. Brown. He started there in 1995.

General William Lyon: Retired Air Force general, currently serves as a director of Board of Fidelity National Financial, Inc. Chairman of the Research and Development Institute at the Air Force Academy.

Yet another Iran-contra connection to 9/11 sat on the BioPort board:

Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr.: Named a director in March 1999. From 1985-89, the Admiral held the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs under President Reagan. After retirement from the military in 1989, Admiral Crowe was a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He has also served as chairman of the notorious President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, 1993-94, and served as U.S. ambassador to the UK and Northern Ireland, 1994-97. Admiral Crowe has been a director of Merrill Lynch, Texaco and General Dynamics. He is currently a director of Bioport and Intervac, an investment firm. He is a part-time senior advisor to Global Options LLC. Admiral Crowe commanded U.S. forces in the Middle East, was the commander-in-chief of NATO forces in Southern Europe, and headed up the nation's largest geographical military operation, the U.S. Pacific Command.13

Very military, very industrial, but the Project Anthrax complex reaches deeply into the financial sector.

It's all in BioPort's records: Compare them with the well-known inside-trade put option activity preceding 911, find a jostling for position in financial circles that suggests premeditation of both 911 and the anthrax attacks, according to a financial researcher consulted for this report:

"Niv Harizman was with Alex. Brown (BT for Bankers Trust. This is the firm that executed the `puts' prior to September 11, plunging the stocks of American Airlines, United Airlines, Boeing, some brokerage houses, and several reinsurance companies (some inter-locked) including AXA Assurance, Swiss Re and Munich Re. These trades hubbed from Alex. Brown, which was acquired with Deutsche Bank's acquisition of Bankers Trust. The gent heading Alex. Brown unit, Deutsche's trading-brokerage arm, was terminated rather suddenly. Former director of enforcement for SEC, Richard Walker, took a position as staff counsel for Deutsche."

Niv Harizman "is a dark side" on the Chicago Board of Options Exchange "(put into play by First Chicago group, Robert Angelo Podesta) when Peter G. Peterson (school under MI-6) was Secretary of Commerce in 1972-73 under Nixon. And Robert Podesta was UnderSecretary of Commerce - both Chicago - pushed through legislation to approve creation of Chicago Board of Options Exchange. (Can't have options trading as it exists in its current form without options on equities to pair, i.e., can't have a bubble economy without a bubble machine). Peterson, currently chairman of the New York Fed, moved up the ranks along notorious Chicago bank lines - 1985 sets up the Blackstone Group* and [Iran-contra's] Frank Carlucci sets up the Carlyle Group the same year. Admiral Crowe, following retirement in 1989, held board positions at Merrill Lynch, General Dynamics and Texaco, all very `Republican' companies at the time ... "14

2) "Zimbabwean authorities have made several reports that indicate that Rhodesians were using biological warfare against guerillas during the liberation war, but these have not received international coverage." - Innocent Chofamba-Sithole and Norman Mlambo, "Ex-Rhodesian under probe for US anthrax attacks," Sunday Mirror, July 9, 2002.http://www.africaonline.co.zw/mirror/stage/archive/020709/national8599.html

4) See, "The Anthrax Letters"http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0208a/0208a-404.html ... This site features a description of the paramilitary tactics of the Selous Scouts wolf pack. A handful of fighters would drop into the back country disguised as rebels. Living off the land for weeks, "they would relentlessly track down their opponents and kill them, even if it meant crossing into neighboring countries in violation of international law. Their training taught them to live off the barren land during their long pursuit on foot, drinking fetid water and eating carrion scraps. Some articles claim that they were responsible for two out of every three enemy fatalities in the civil war. Admirers and vets boast that the Selous Scouts were the most skilled and ruthless guerrilla warfare fighters in history."

5) See, "The Biovangelist" web site. http://jdo.org/hatfill.htm

6) UClA Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, "Reporter Interview on Steven Hatfill Article," September 15, 2003.http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/reporterinterview.html,";

Blackstone Group has been looking at German utility giant RWE, a person familiar with the situation told Dow Jones. The person was responding to market rumors that Blackstone was working with Permira and Warren Buffett on a joint bid for RWE.

Blackstone Group has been looking at German utility giant RWE, a person familiar with the situation told Dow Jones. The person was responding to market rumors that Blackstone was working with Permira and Warren Buffett on a joint bid for RWE.•••••••Blackstone Group, Larry Silverstein, Kroll Associates, Eliot Spitzer

From: Spitzer's Real Scandalhttp://www.nymegaphone.com/node/24

Larry Silverstein

... New York real estate baron Larry Silverstein became primary lease-holder on the World Trade Center a mere six weeks before 9/11. It had never changed hands before. For a down payment, Silverstein put up only $14 million of his own money, and his friends at the powerful investment bank Blackstone Group kicked in another $111 million. After 9/11, Silverstein demanded a whopping $7 billion insurance payout, in the form of two $3.5 billion payments. He argued the two different plane crashes were two separate “occurrences” of two separate attacks.

The Megaphone has now learned that as attorney general, Spitzer got involved behind the scenes, and in the courts, filing a amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief on Silverstein’s behalf on Jan. 15, 2003. For years, this brief languished in the files of the public records room on the 17th floor of the Second Circuit Court in Manhattan, until it was discovered and brought to The New York Megaphone by NYC attorney and author Carl Person. The court ended up agreeing with Spitzer and Silverstein, over-turning the decision of a lower court. Spitzer helped mid-wife a fat compromise and an eventual $4.5 billion payout for Silverstein. The Megaphone’s multiple requests for comment from Governor Spitzer were ignored.

Attorney Carl Person told The Megaphone, “I was surprised to see that Spitzer had used his position as attorney general to support one private litigant over another. Normally, this is not done…Silverstein could well have been someone who destroyed evidence concerning the 9/11 events by apparently ordering or consenting to the tearing (pulling) down of 7 WTC and the removal of the debris from his multiple ground leased premises thereafter.”

Silverstein’s World Trade Center Building 7 collapsed at 5:20 p.m. on 9/11 without being hit by an airplane. Thirty seven eyewitnesses working on the ground as firefighters, EMTs, and reporters, recalled being warned in advance the tower was coming down. The official story however, claims a fire ignited a fuel tank in the building, hastening its sudden collapse.

WTC 7 was the NY headquarters of CIA and the SEC office investigating Enron. 9/11 skeptics believe the building was taken down by controlled demolition. Larry Silverstein himself said in a 2002 episode of PBS’s Frontline that on 9/11 he recalled remarking, "Maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it…they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse." Silverstein later claimed that by “pull,” he meant removing firefighters, not pulling the building down. However, all firefighters had been “pulled” from the building three hours earlier.

The Kroll Connection

This past August, another scandal radiated from the Spitzer circle. This time it was Nixon’s arch-strategist Roger Stone leaving a threatening voice mail for Spitzer’s dad, Bernard. Stone allegedly claimed he would subpoena the elder Spitzer for the $5 million in illegal loans Spitzer senior made to his son during his 1998 Attorney General campaign. Stone denied he had made the call. To prove he did, the Spitzer family hired Kroll Associates to trace the call. Why Kroll? Spitzer has a long relationship with this powerful, cryptic security company.

Kroll’s CEO on 9/11 was one of Spitzer’s old mentors from the Manhattan DA’s office, Michael Cherkasky. Cherkasky investigated bank BCCI (which had links to both Islamic terror and the CIA), and the mysterious 1993 World Trade Center (WTC) bombing. Cherkasky’s 2002 book Forewarned: Why the Government is Failing to Protect Us, and What We Must Do to Protect Ourselves is a confused mix of fear-mongering and insider’s analysis. He sheepishly admits that the CIA was in part culpable for the 1993 WTC bombing, since they helped pull known terrorist “Blind Sheikh” Abdel bin-Rahman into the country. Cherkasky admits the FBI had a mole inside Rahman’s 1993 WTC bombing cell, and lays blame for the bombing on the FBI.

After observing the 1993 WTC bombing as an operation penetrated by CIA and FBI, Cherkasky he became head of Kroll, the “the CIA of Wall Street.” Kroll took on the management of WTC after the 1993 bombing. Blackstone Group, the same financiers who backed the Larry Silverstein, have also been involved with Kroll, owning big chunks of Kroll stock on occasion, according to SEC reports.

Cherkasky has donated $14,500 to Eliot Spitzer's political campaigns.

The Anthrax Connection

Eliot Spitzer’s connection to key 9/11 players extends to fellow life-long Democrat, Jerome Hauer, managing director of Kroll on 9/11. Only Jerome Hauer and his former boss, Rudolph Giuliani, were indicted by the San Diego Citizens Grand Jury.

According to Bay Area News (a San Francisco-bay based publication) and Wikipedia, Jerome Hauer warned the Bush White House to go on Cipro, the anti-anthrax drug, on 9/11/01. Hauer denied this allegation to The Megaphone. The White House did go on Cipro. Six days later, the anthrax attacks started, and sent the country back into paroxysms of terror.

Government watchdog group Judicial Watch demanded to know who warned the Bush White House, but not the public, about anthrax. The White House stonewalled their Freedom of Information Act requests.

“I read that the White House did know, and they went on the anti-biotics,” says Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman. He got involved because, “African American employees at Brentwood [US Postal Facility] were basically left out there to twist in the wind when the white guys up on Capitol Hill got immediate treatment.”

Post-9/11, Jerome Hauer went on to be Coordinator of the National Institute of Health's investigation of anthrax deaths. His report blamed Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. That assertion has been widely discredited, since the five deaths in 2001 were from a fine, “weaponized” form of anthrax, the “Ames Strain” that only the U.S. military and U.S. federal government possessed.

On 9/11, Jerome Hauer appeared on television with Dan Rather. Rather posited that the 9/11 attacks must have had state sponsorship. Hauer urged Rather to blame Bin Laden only. When Rather voiced suspicions about the way the buildings fell, Hauer offered that they simply came down because they were hit by a plane. Without an investigation, Hauer somehow knew two major parts of 9/11’s official story before it emerged.

Hauer is biological terrorism expert whose resume includes time at Science Applications International Corp (SAIC), a military contractor doing work in nuclear issues and psy-ops, and Bioport, manufacturer of the controversial anthrax vaccine.

Jerry Hauer and anthrax go way back. In May of 1998, he spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations on the topic of "Building a 'Biobomb': Terrorist Challenge." That evening Hauer co-presented on the topic Steven Hatfill.

Yes, that Steven Hatfill, the one who later became the FBI’s prime suspect in the anthrax mailings. A year after their CFR presentations, Hatfill and Hauer would become coworkers at SAIC's Center for Counterterrorism Technology and Analysis.

Hatfill had worked at Ft. Detrick, the U.S. Army’s bio-weapons lab in Maryland. Hatfill was never convicted, nor even prosecuted, for anything. Today he’s suing reporters for defamation. On Aug. 15, a judge ruled that five top national reporters would have to reveal confidential government sources who fingered Hatfill.

In his interview with The Megaphone, Hauer repeatedly referred to the Grand Jury as “a bunch of nutjobs” and he defended Steven Hatfill. But when asked directly if Hatfill was innocent, Hauer was less than clear: “I think that the FBI should not have said anything about Hatfill until they knew more. I do not believe Hatfill is a murderer. And I think Steve Hatfill is very passionate, but I don’t think he’s a murderer, and I don’t believe he did it.”

Hauer was not willing to conclusively say that Hatfill was uninvolved in the anthrax attacks, stating, “I’m not going to get into those details.”

Of the five people who died from anthrax exposure, one was a New Yorker. Kathy Nguyen, a hospital worker in the Bronx, was a victim of inhalation anthrax. She died alone in a hospital on October 31, 2001.

A 2004 petition gathered 100,000 signatures begging then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to investigate the real source of the 2001 attacks. A Zogby poll that year likewise found that 66 per cent of voters wanted Eliot Spitzer, to tackle these tough questions. What those poll respondents didn’t know is that Spitzer can’t investigate 9/11 or anthrax. He would have to indict his friends from Kroll, Jerry Hauer and Michael Cherkasky. That’s the real scandal.

To listen to Sander Hicks’s interview with Jerry Hauer, or see the Spitzer/Silverstein Amicus Brief in full, log onto the new•••••••SCAM: BEAR STEARNS - TIMOTHY GEITHNER AND THE BLACKSTONE-BCCI SET UP

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14995 SUMMARY

The Blackstone Group, a major private equity firm tied to foreign policy influence lobbying groups such as Kissinger Associates, Scowcroft Advisors, and the Madeline Albright Group, had an affiliated spinoff company, BlackRock, a Caymans Island foreign bank associate, evaluate the “fairness” to shareholders of the JP Morgan Acquisition of Bear Stearns. The deal involved a bailout of Bear Stearns creditors directly, and indirectly through cash infusions via the Fed’s open window of lending, including lending billions to Citibank in exchange for mortgage collateral. The lead negotiator of the deal, the President of the NY Fed, Geithner, is a former employee of Kissinger Associates, a Saudi-China lobbying firm, and was appointed to the Fed by Peter Peterson of Blackstone. He also worked for Secretary Rubin at the Clinton Treasury Department. Secretary Rubin is now an executive with Citibank a major beneficiary of the bailout. Citibank has major Saudi shareholders, and as such is not an American bank, per se. Citibank has been investigated for illegal terrorist money laundering activities in the Middle East, and Geithner was an employee at Kissinger Associates when it was engaged in discussions of mergers with BCCI, which was later indicted for drug money laundering.

CHRONOLOGY

1988 Blackstone forms BlackRock as mortgage investment subsidiary. Its CEO is Peter Peterson, also CEO of the Council on Foreign Relations, for which Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Robert Rubin are officers. 1986 East Asian International economic specialist, Timothy Geithner joins Kissinger and Associates, a major Chinese Financial lobbying firm with strong ties to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. At the time both Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft are partners, as well as international economist Alan Stoga. It is not clear whether Geitner worked with Stoga at this time, but his expertise in China would be welcome in its China Joint Venture.

1986-1989 Kissinger Associates, Stoga and consultant ambassador Sergio Correa discuss a merger between BCCI and Kissinger Associates. Correa acts as a front man for BCCI in acquisition explorations as a paid retained consultant to both BCCI, and separately to Kissinger Associates. toga arranges contacts between BCCI Saudi linked executives Gaith Pharaon and Abol Helmy. It is not known whether Geithner worked on these transactions.

c. 1989 BCCI is indicted and Kissinger Associates ends discussions. Geithner leaves Kissinger Associates and begins work as a civil servant in the Treasury Department. He is confirmed as Asst. Sec. for International Affairs in Treasury working for Secretary Rubin of the Clinton Administration.[Senior executive at Goldman Sachs and later Citibank a Saudi controlled foreign bank]. Rubin also serves as an officer of the CFR managed by Peter Peterson CEO of Blackstone. 1992 BlackRock is spinoff Blackstone and becomes independent.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/04/03/blackstone-blackrock-whoever/?mod=WSJBlog BlackRock set to profit from Mortgage Distress Bailout, The new company has been formed by BlackRock, Highfields, and a management team of mortgage industry led by Stanford Kurland, Private National Mortgage Acceptance Company's (PennyMac) chairman and CEO. PennyMac will raise capital from private investors, acquire loans from financial institutions seeking to reduce its mortgage exposures, and seek to create value for both borrowers and investors through distinctive loan servicing. http://www.banking-business-review.com/article_news.asp?guid=17D0DB88-3917-44F6-AFF3-1D1AECC10E77 New York Fed Names Timothy F. Geithner President

" ... Bruce Ivins ... played a lead role in helping a private company, BIOPORT, win regulatory approval to continue making the vaccine required for U.S. service personnel deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and other regions.From 2000 to early 2002, Ivins and two colleagues from USAMRIID helped BioPort resolve problems related to the potency of the vaccine. Because of those and other manufacturing difficulties, production had been suspended. The efforts of Ivins and his colleagues helped BioPort win FDA approval to resume production. ...http://rinf.com/alt-news/war-terrorism/anthrax-scientist-bruce-ivins-stood-to-benefit-from-a-panic/4228/

Bioport

The stock market symbol for BioPort, Inc. ought to be pi - its corruption goes on indefinitely, or so it seems when you begin to sift through the records.

Fuad El-Hibri

The company's founder and CEO is Mr. Fuad El-Hibri, a German of Lebanese extraction and a naturalized American citizen. In 1998, El-Hibri entered into a leveraged buyout of the Michigan State-owned Biological Products Institute (MBPI). This company held the exclusive contract on the U.S. supply of anthrax vaccine ... and it wasn't all that effective against the disease, right from the start. The Wall Street Journal discovered: "While its vaccine worked well against the Vollum strain of anthrax (used by Russia), it was more problematic against the Ames strain. So it had conducted tests with the virulent Ames strain on guinea pigs, mice and monkeys with mixed results. BioPort's spokesperson confirmed that it had access to the virulent Ames strain for testing on animals."

For the sole purpose of acquiring MBPI, El-Hibri became an American citizen. He gave retired Admiral William J. Crowe Jr. a large chunk of Intervac, "one of the corporations involved in the maneuver. The controlling shareholder was the same I&F Holdings used to take control of the British biotech lab, CAMR. He then renamed the company BioPort. BioPort, which controlled America's anthrax vaccine, was apparently of some interest to scientists in Afghanistan since an environmental assessment report of its planned laboratory renovations turned up in the house of a Pakistani scientist in Kabul..."1

Crowe made no investment in either company, but owns 22.5 percent of all Intervac shares. Another 30 percent went to El-Hibri's wife. In 1999, ABC reported that the remainder of the Intervace shares were "in the hands of I&F Holdings, a company directed by Nancy El-Hibri's father-in-law, Ibrahim El-Hibri, a Venezuelan citizen, and her husband, Fuad El-Hibri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent. ... Crowe's ownership of Intervac stock gives him a 13 percent share of Bioport."2

The company's web site displays El-Hibri's bona fidés: "… helped establish regional offices in Singapore and Sydney for Booz-Allen & Hamilton..." Stop the scroll right there, because in 1990 Mr. El-Hibri also arranged "the purchase of anthrax vaccine for Saudi Arabia." Did he perform this service for Booz-Allen or the CIA? The well-connected security firm, to be sure, had extensive ties to the intelligence sector – and silky Fahd palaces, too.

Students of the CIA know Booz-Allen as a privatized branch of the Agency with Saudi defense contracts worth billions. The company trained the Saudi marine corps and operates the country's Armed Forces Staff College.3 On 14 June 2000, the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced that the Royal Saudi Naval Forces had begun a ten year development program that drew on the services of two American contractors - SAIC and Booz-Allen Hamilton.4

The FBI's Dale Watson was a leading "investigator" of the 1993 WTC bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing, the East Africa Embassy bombings, Khobar Towers, USS Cole, the September 11 attacks and the anthrax mailings before he "retired" to work for Booz-Allen Hamilton.5 Former CIA director James Woolsey is a vice president there.

" ... As a Senior Associate and resident project manager, Mr. El-Hibri led consulting projects in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Sydney, and Wellington. Before joining Booz-Allen, he was a manager of Citicorp in New York (Mergers and Acquisitions) and in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia."

All of this is more than grounds for investigation - these financial bridges to the Middle East are, in a sensible world, an argument for impeachment:

In January 2003, Bob Fitrakis at the Free Press web site wrote: "Let's recall Bush's strange relationship with that bizarre little company in Lansing, Michigan, known as Bioport. The company, despite failing various FDA inspections and being accused of bad record-keeping, holds the only federal contract for producing the anthrax vaccine. Bush has rewarded Bioport with favors such as ongoing military protection, and within weeks of 9/11 granted them a contract that tripled the price per vaccine.

"Now, add into the mix that the Strangelovian CIA-connected Battelle and Britain's top secret Porton Down labs are partners with Bioport.... Public records and foreign press reports have linked El-Hibri to the selling of anthrax to Saudi Arabia after the Pentagon refused to. He's also a business associate of the bin Laden family. A real Congressional investigation of Bush's relationships with the bin Laden family, El-Hibri and the related drug bank BCCI would easily lead to the President's impeachment."6

The ABC report was a horror show of rampant side-effects produced by BioPort.

The bottom line was human agony:

WIDESPREAD MISTRUST AMONG THE RANKS20/20 REPORT

PFC Matthew Baker who was stationed at Fort Stewart, Ga. went AWOL after his first sergeant threatened to have him strapped to a gurney and forcibly injected with the anthrax vaccine.

MAJ Sonnie Bates, USAF, one of many pilots at Dover, AFB Del. was headed for a court martial and up to five years in prison until he went on 60 Minutes and told what was going on. Soon the Air Force scrapped their hard-line tactics and Bates was allowed to leave the service.

More than a dozen members of Bates' squadron came down sick with a variety of illnesses. Thyroid and liver damage, memory loss, bone and joint pain, fevers, dizziness, infected cysts and lesions. The only common thread was these maladies immediately followed anthrax injections.

In a letter to the Air Force, Bates stated his position was a matter of principle.

"I'm doing what I've always been trained and taught to do. If you know it's right, you stand up for it. And likewise, if you know it's wrong, you have to challenge it, no matter what the consequences.

"After 13 years of exemplary service to my country, I am willing to give up my job, my rank, and everything I have worked for to avoid taking an unsafe drug."

Army SPC Kevin Edwards started to feel sick a few weeks after his third anthrax shot. He nearly died. Bleeding sores covered the soldier's entire body. Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina said he could barely keep his composure after seeing pictures taken of Edwards at an Army hospital. Jones is one of three dozen congressmen calling for a halt in the forced anthrax immunization program.

Texas Army National Guard CPT Jody Grenga, a medical operations officer with nearly 18 years service, was kicked out of the Army for refusing the anthrax shots on religious grounds. The highly respected officer said she also refused the immunizations because of her medical history of adverse reactions to medications.

PFC Jemekia Barber, an African-American Army soldier who was forced out of the service with a less-than-honorable discharge after she refused the shots, has filed suit in U.S. District Court in Colorado. Her lawyers contend the mandatory shot order violated Barber's Constitutional rights. Herbert Fenster argued that because his client is of child-bearing age, ordering her to take the anthrax vaccine injections could subject her to risk of bearing a child with birth defects.

Two former Connecticut Air National Guard pilots, MAJ Russell Dingle and MAJ Thomas "Buzz" Rempfer said they concluded the Pentagon's use of the vaccine was illegal because of serious questions about its safety and effectiveness. They said they were ordered not to talk to the press, but refused, and with seven other pilots in their unit, the 103rd Fighter Wing, resigned.

More than thirty pilots and 17 KC-10 tanker crew-members at Travis AFB in California quit rather than take the shots. So did pilots in theWisconsin Air National Guard. And Air Force Capt. Clifton Volpe, assigned to a VIP transport squadron at Andrews AFB Maryland, is getting the boot for refusing to take the controversial injections.

Perhaps the most eloquent of the military opponents of the mandatory anthrax inoculation program is retired Air Force Lt. Col. Redmond Handy. Named the "most outstanding officer" in 1996 by the Reserve Officers Association, Handy was a full colonel on "the fast track to stars" when he quit his Pentagon job and decided to speak out. Because he didn't have the minimum time in grade requirement as a full colonel, Handy put principle ahead of pay and left the Air Force as a light colonel.

"It is appalling that Admiral Crowe, who was a key player in the effort to let all U.S. citizens sleep better at night by leading our defenders of freedom to defeat communism, now keeps these same defenders and their families awake at night wondering if their health will be defeated by his company's product."

BRUCE IVINS AND BIOPORT

FROM: "The Anthrax Attacks: Sunlight Is the Best Disinfectant," by Bill Simpich, IndyMedia, Aug 4th, 2008Iv

Ivins's work is the focus of a 2004 book by Gary Matsumuto, "Vaccine A: The Covert Government Experiment That's Killing Our Soldiers." Matsumoto is not shy about making controversial statements, which only adds to the aura of intrigue around both Ivins and himself.

The premise of "Vaccine A" is that since the 1991 Gulf War US soldiers have been unwittingly exposed to a "second-generation" experimental anthrax vaccine designed by Ivins and his colleagues, which improperly contained an oil-based substance known as squalene. Matsumuto and others claim squalene is the main cause of the autoimmune disorder known as "Gulf War Syndrome." From 1991 to the present day, many soldiers have refused to submit to military vaccinations for anthrax for fear of contracting Gulf War Syndrome. There are strong arguments on both sides of the squalene dispute, and this is an ongoing controversy.

The work of Bruce Ivins is known to many of these vets - especially those who suffered Gulf War Syndrome, or those who were court-martialed for refusing to use the vaccine in fear it was tainted. It is intriguing that Matsumoto paid special attention to Ivins, claiming that Ivins knew that the experimental oil-boosted vaccine "can provoke toxic, allergic, ulcerative, or lethal reactions."

Matsumoto's 2004 book focuses on Ivins as the man with the motive to be pushing to get approval for the new second-generation vaccine.

"Only one paper at the workshop reported near perfect results - 100 percent protection from the Ames strain with just one or two shots ... As an old Marine Corps expression goes, this particular paper shined 'like a diamond inside a goat's ass.' USAMRIID's Bruce Ivins had reported at this very same workshop that his "one-shot wonder" - protective antigen or mere fragments of it combined with oil additives - protected every animal challenged with Ames with a single injection." Matsumoto, Vaccine A page 87.

The BioThrax vaccine was approved by Homeland Security in 2006. It is currently the only anthrax vaccine approved for use. Made by the BioPort corporation, the new vaccine is derived from Ivins's experimental second-generation vaccine - however, BioPort maintains that no squalene is involved in its manufacture. The controversy continues - and Matsumoto's role in controversy will return later on.

A little background on the origins of the anthrax vaccine dispute is helpful here. On December 15, 1997, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen announced that all US military personnel would be vaccinated in order to guard against the biological warfare agent anthrax, which was allegedly proliferating as a bioweapon in other nations. Rep. Christopher Shays, at the beginning of a 1999 hearing on oversight of the anthrax vaccine inoculation program, asked:

"Why would active duty, Reserve and National Guard personnel jeopardize their military careers, and even their liberty, rather than take the vaccine? ... The missing element of the mandatory anthrax vaccine program is trust. Radiation testing, Agent Orange, the reckless use of experimental drugs and mysterious Gulf War illness have made military men and women understandably distrustful of the Pentagon on medical matters."

The controversy over the anthrax vaccine among US military troops has been constant from the first Gulf War to the present. In a 2003 decision, US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled in favor of six anonymous military litigants, holding that the military's mandatory administration of the vaccine was illegal because the Food and Drug Administration had not approved its use for inhalation anthrax, only for anthrax contracted through the skin.

Judge Sullivan's ruling forced the Pentagon to suspend its involuntary program almost continually between December 2003 and February 2007, until the FDA ruled the vaccine was safe and efficient for all forms of anthrax and permitted the Pentagon to reorder. Based on this decision, another federal judge admonished the Air Force Board in April 2008, for refusing to compensate military personnel for refusing the vaccine between 1999 and 2004. ...

The media concentration on the anthrax mailings has taken the heat off of BioPort and the Pentagon for the highly toxic vaccine - which, by some measures, produced a medical situation far more dire than that brought about by the 2001 mailings currently blamed solely on Bruce Ivins:

"'Our family has been through a living hell, to almost see your 23-year-old son die...' exclaims Cheryl. 'The government is wrong, and they need to take care of all these people that they've hurt.' The Department of Defense says they continue to believe that the vaccine is 'safe' ..." - Firstcoastnews.com

Fuad El-Hibri arranged investments for well-heeled Saudi clients as a broker at Citibank's Jeddah office. Tom Suber, a contributor to the Rouge Forum, a grassroots Internet think-tank, reports that the broker handled "the individual financial holdings of the bin Laden family group and the larger $18 billion Carlyle Group."

The bin Ladens and Carlyle are "reputed to have had partnership interests with Fuad El-Hibri's Porton International and Bioport investments. These embarrassing partnerships are the result of complex web of interlocking private corporate holdings and are publicly denied by the El-Hibri family."1

Carlyle Management Group, of course, is America's eleventh leading defense contractor, founded by Iran-contra's Frank Carlucci, James Baker III and George H.W. Bush.

Ties to the bin Ladens and Carlyle constituted one "embarrassing" pact with the devil.

Another was El-Hibri's acquisition of the Center for Applied Microbiology and Research (CAMR) at Porton Down in the UK, a government-held toxic stockpile-research laboratory privatized by Margaret Thatcher. CAMR was launched under private ownership - El-Hibri's - as Porton International in 1993.

Porton Down was the English mirror-image of Ft. Detrick. Both military laboratories conducted Auschwitz-style experiments on human subjects during the Cold War. In 2002, Express reported that scientists of the Ministry of Defense faced prosecution "over horrifying experiments on service men and women during chemical and biological weapons tests."

Subjects were duped into volunteering, led to believe that the military doctors were searching for an innocuous "cold cure." The guinea-pigs said they were "impregnated with deadly chemical agents such as sarin and mustard gas." Ronald Maddison, a volunteer airman, died after a cloth treated with sarin was wrapped round his arm. Another subject said he was coerced to participate "under threat of court martial. During three nightmare weeks at the center, he said he was stripped to his underpants and marched repeatedly into gas chambers where he was impregnated with sarin, tabin and mustard gas."2

El-Hibri inherited a horror factory, and this it remained.

By 1996, Suber says, "the rape of the public resources of Great Britain was virtually complete," speaking of the "conservative" agenda behind privatization.

The profit-lusting "interests of the Saudis and the Carlyle Group began to look to the United States for more promising plunder."

Michigan Governor John Engler was urged by fellow Republicans to privatize the state-owned vaccination lab - exactly as Thatcher had done with CAMR. It was renamed the Michigan Biologics Products Institute.

"Governor Engler gave the most respectable and profitable agency in Michigan government to Fuad El-Hibri without any individual investment whatsoever," Suber writes. The new owners "incurred no individual expense, made no investments, and did not owe any individual promissory notes or obligations of any kind for their new lab purchase. Receipt of a $180 million business for absolutely nothing. The next hand-out the company received was an unsecured, interest-free loan of $18.7 million as an advance payment from the Defense Department ..."3

All this fuss over a vaccine that didn't even work against inhalation anthrax ... it just made people sick.

But homeland defense was never the idea, as Houston attorney Linda Minor noted after scanning BioPort's directors' page: "This group is obviously an investment syndicate composed of numerous intelligence agency members representing assorted countries..."4

Bio-economic terrorism is the CIA's kind of low-intensity conflict. Dr. Edgar J. DaSilva, director of the Division of Life Sciences of the UN, says the approach is predicated on "the undermining and destruction of economic progress and stability" by "the development and use of biological agents against economic targets such as crops, livestock and ecosystems."

Germs, bacilli and viruses have certain advantages over conventional armaments - explosives and noxious gases have to be explained, but viral agents are plausibly deniable: "Such warfare can always be carried out under the pretexts that such traumatic occurrences are the result of natural circumstances that lead to outbreaks of diseases and disasters of either endemic or epidemic proportions."5 The Zimbabwe anthrax outbreak, the West Nile Virus, conceived at SAIC-USAMRIID, for instance. Add a trained provocateur – a biochemical warfare specialist hailing from a Rhodesian death squad with a parafascist history will do – a little media manipulation, and the result is anthrax psychosis.

That's exactly what the collective response was called in Argentina when a false alarm was tripped by a suspect piece of mail. "Anthrax psychosis," an Argentine newspaper reported, spread in October 2001, "when a travel brochure mailed from Miami to a Buenos Aires family initially tested positive." The spores tested inactive the second time, but "within hours, frantic citizens swamped police stations, hospitals and all kinds of government offices throughout the country with about 1,000 pieces of suspicious mail, most of them posted from the United States or Pakistan."6

The Ames strain did get around. The lethal dust was found in mail rooms ... in a Princeton borough ... in the Senate ... in Dan Rather's CBS office ... in a Kabul factory ... in New York City Hall ... in a diplomatic pouch to the US Consulate General in Yekaterinburg, Russia ... in the Supreme Court's basement mailroom ... in a letter mailed to Kenya ... at the Bureau of Prisons headquarters in Washington ... at the broadcaster's headquarters … 30 Rockefeller Plaza ... on and on.

And the FBI, by focusing on Hatfill alone, gave the impression that the perpetrator was a lone gunman. But he had accomplices, apparently ran with a death squad in the United States as he did in Rhodesia.

The West Nile and anthrax plots – as reconstructed by Leonard Horowitz, Robert Lederman and other independent researchers – began with the meeting at the White House regarding the fate of OraVax, attended by representatives of the company, the administration, and DoD officials. It was agreed that the company, facing bankruptcy, would receive a pass to inventory vaccines.

But some of those attending this meeting were active in this American Pinay Circle. One of them was William Patrick III, President and CEO of Advanced Biosystems Inc. (ABS). Patrick ran the anthrax "weaponization" program at the Ft. Detrick-SAIC lab where Hatfill worked. In 1999, Patrick wrote a study, according to the Baltimore Sun, that discussed "the danger of anthrax spores spreading through the air and the requirements for decontamination after various kinds of attacks. The author, William C. Patrick III, describes placing 2.5 grams of Bacillus globigii, an anthrax simulant, in a standard business envelope – slightly more than the estimated amount of anthrax in each of the letters that killed five people last fall..."

Stephen Hatfill, come to find out, "is a friend and protegé of Patrick, 75, a bio-weapons legend who has himself experienced the dual status of expert and possible suspect..."7

"Protegé?"

In 2002, the Washington Post reported allegations that Partick had produced a blueprint for the anthrax mailings:

"Hatfill commissioned William Patrick III, a biological weapons expert, to write a report on how to deal with anthrax sent through the mail. "It was a public service," Glasberg said, and Patrick was paid only $500. Hatfill and a colleague took Patrick's report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and submitted it to its bioterrorism preparation center. The CDC was working on the same project, Glasberg said, and produced the same findings and recommendations as Patrick. ...

"The concept of a report on anthrax mail attacks - two years before last October's mailings - intrigued the FBI. In particular, Patrick's report discussed mailing 2.5 grams of anthrax powder, about the same amount contained in the deadly anthrax letters.

Glasberg said Patrick used 2.5 grams because that was the amount of talc he poured into an envelope, as a test, to see how much could pass unobtrusively through the mails. Some media reports have called Patrick's report a "blueprint" for the fatal mailings. ...

Boris Lederer, who worked with Hatfill at Science Applications International, recalled his colleague's reaction when the anthrax mailings occurred. "It was just shock and complete disbelief that this was happening," Lederer said.8

Disbelief at a lethal domestic covert operation? The most relevant clues went unreported by the "mainstream" media, for instance, per the Washington Post:

"... Hatfill's résumé detailing those periods has created another storm. Hatfill claimed on a 1997 résumé that he served in the Army Special Forces. Army records show that he enlisted in the Reserve in 1975, served a year of active duty and attended -- but dropped out of -- Special Forces training. Glasberg declined to comment on Hatfill's military record. ... "9

The relevant corporate connections, ala BioPort, were played down. One of them was especially interesting in light of the deep history of the AIDS virus. McClatchy reported recently:

" ... Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Ivins had worked on and held a share of two anthrax vaccine patents, at least one of which was licensed to VaxGen, Inc., a California firm that later won an $877 million contract to make the vaccine for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Bioshield program. But when VaxGen failed to meet deadlines, the government scrapped the contract. ... "http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/46642.htmlDetails of background of the VaxGen contract reveal a motive for one of the mailings. The motive for the overall plot centers on this pharmaceutical house - VaxGen and BioPort together had the most to gain from the patent on the anthrax vaccine, though this charge has since been widely leveled at the late Bruce Ivins:

A few months before he was targeted in the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld questioning whether the anthrax vaccine the military was giving soldiers was unsafe and should be discontinued. The letter, obtained by The Courant, was written with the help of a number of Connecticut officials. They were concerned about complaints from local National Guard members who refused to take the vaccine because they feared it would make them ill. Apart from raising the issue of the vaccine's safety, the criticism may have had an unintended effect. NBC News reported Tuesday that federal authorities today will reveal that those same complaints could be among the motives in the anthrax attacks that left an Oxford woman and four others dead. The suspected killer, Bruce Ivins, was one of the Army's lead scientists on the anthrax vaccine and was angered by suggestions that it made recipients ill, NBC reported. ...

Ivins ... was a member of a panel that the government convened to study the vaccine's effectiveness. ... The committee was formed by the Department of Defense before the anthrax mailings and was still meeting at the time the letters were mailed, according to Chairman Jack Melling. He is the former head of Porton Down

Now the anatomy of an inside job becomes apparent to anyone - even Americans reporter who have helium in their heads - there is no "lone gunman."

Donald Rumsfeld was in the loop:

"In the letter to Rumsfeld, Daschle raised concerns that the vaccine didn't work and may have made soldiers sick. He noted that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves drugs only after they are proven safe and effective.

"'A growing number of people believe that the use of the anthrax vaccine as currently formulated to protect humans against inhalation of anthrax spores fails to meet this test,' wrote Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat. 'We all acknowledge that the threat posed by biological weapons, including anthrax, is a real one that the Administration and the Congress have a responsibility to address.'

" The letter, also signed by then House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, was sent to Rumsfeld on June 21, 2001. The first anthrax letters were postmarked Sept. 18, 2001. The anthrax-laced letters sent to the offices of Daschle and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy were postmarked Oct. 9, 2001.

Ottilie Lundgren, 94, of Oxford, was killed in November 2001 when she opened an anthrax-laced letter that passed through the same sorting machine in a New Jersey postal facility as the letter to Daschle. Daschle could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

"He has criticized the FBI investigation of the anthrax letters and the agency's refusal to update him and other victims on their progress. The FBI is expected to meet with the victims and their families today and might release documents that authorities say link Ivins to the crime. Daschle got involved in the anthrax vaccine issue through U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, whose office represented Connecticut National Guard members who refused to take the anthrax vaccine.

"Blumenthal said Tuesday that attorneys in his office worked closely with Dodd and Daschle to craft the letter to Rumsfeld. ... "11

"You simply don't develop a new hyper-weaponized strain of anthrax powder for military defense, and then commission the top U.S. anthrax expert to report on this new weapon's capability and lethality from mailed delivery, unless that's how you foresee it being used." - Ingri Cassel, director, National Vaccination Liberation Association

The corporatists in the post-911 war profiteering loop derive a childlike thrill from their weaponized anthrax stockpiles.

A "new and highly lethal strain" was produced in advance of 911, a nameless Pentagon general told the New York Times in September 2001.

He mentioned something called Operation Jefferson.1

Battelle Memorial Institute

What was "Operation Jefferson?" Before the anthrax mailings, William Patrick III went to work at the Battelle Memorial Institute (BMI). Patrick holds five classified patents in the manufacture of weapons-grade anthrax.

BMI – a contractual partner of BioPort – hired him to conduct a risk-assessment study involving the dissemination of anthrax powder through the mail system.2 BMI is located in West Jefferson, Ohio. The work was done at the BL-3 Anthrax Lab.3

Battelle had exclusive control of the Ames strain, a fact the press has not made clear. It's true that Dugway Proving Ground had an anthrax program of its own, as reported, but Battelle directed that program as well. This narrows it down quite a bit...

The FBI was drawn straight to William Patrick III, Stephen Hatfill's "mentor" at Ft. Detrick, and Ken Alibeck, a BMI consultant with a background in CBW research for the Soviets.4

One independent Internet news site reports that the FBI investigated "the possibility that financial gain was the motive behind the anthrax mailings."

Two federal laboratories were searched, BMI and Dugway, but "a contradictory announcement was relayed the same day [December 21, 2001] by Ohio Senator Mike DeWine. Based on an ABC News report concerning a BMI employee who had been under FBI investigation for an anthrax threat, FBI Director Robert Mueller had, according to The Dispatch, assured Senator DeWine that the bureau was not investigating, nor intending to investigate, anyone with, or formerly with, BMI."5

Case closed.

Nevertheless, the FBI's stalling perplexed reporters assigned to the story. George Monbiot wrote in the Guardian in May 2002: "Last week, I phoned the FBI. Why, I asked, when the evidence was so abundant, did the trail appear to have gone cold? `The investigation is continuing,' the spokesman replied. 'Has it gone cold because it has led you to a government office?' I asked. He put down the phone." Had the FBI spokesman remained on the line, there were a number of related outrages he might have explained:

"The army's development of weaponized anthrax [the processed Ames strain], for example, directly contravenes both the biological weapons convention and domestic law. So does its plan to test live microbes in `aerosol chambers' at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, also in Maryland. So does its development of a genetically modified fungus for attacking coca crops in Colombia, and GM bacteria for destroying materials belonging to enemy forces. These, as the research group Project Sunshine has discovered, appear to be just a tiny sample of the illegal offensive biological research programmes which the US government has secretly funded..."6

Some of the government's anthrax has been weaponized, kills effectively but is otherwise useless. It is also illegal. Ingri Cassel, director of the National Vaccination Liberation Association, points out that vaccines "are developed to help guard against pre-existing threats." Ames was processed illegally, "apparently for offensive military uses, sabotage, and even terrorism. You simply don't develop a new hyper-weaponized strain of anthrax powder for military defense ... and then commission the top U.S. anthrax expert [William C. Patrick, III] to report on this new weapon's capability and lethality from mailed delivery, unless that's how you foresee it being used."7

Once the anthrax was weaponized – milled and capable of airborne transmission – BMI ran a classified test in the Nevada desert. This was in early September 2001.

It was reported that Patrick's study on the mailing of milled anthrax spores was instrumental to the test.

Were Stephen Hatfill recruited for the next phase of "testing?

"This appears to be the case and explains the FBI's capricious explanations to the press: "Operation Jefferson" is a federally-sanctioned covertoperation that would have never come to light had it not been for thedoggedness of independent journalists and the scientific community.

Wayne Madsen also points to past bio-warfare studies:

"In 1957, at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, the Q-Fever toxin was discharged by an airborne F-100A plane. If a more potent dose had been used, the Army concluded 99 per cent of the humans in the area would have been infected. In the 1960s, conscientious objecting Seventh Day Adventists, serving in non-combat positions in the Army, were exposed to airborne tularemia..."8

Jerry Hauer

The West Nile outbreak and the anthrax mailings began with a 1998 BioVax meeting held in the Truman Room of the White House, attended by SAIC's Jerry Hauer and William Patrick.

Another participant at the meeting was William Cohen, who, as a Republican Senator, signed off on the heavily-spun Cheney-Hamilton Iran-contra report. In 2004, he was elected to the American International Group's (AIG) Board of Directors.

AIG is part-owner of Kroll Associates, the infamous private security firm. Kroll – run by former CIA, FBI, British secret service, Scotland Yard and British Special Air Service agents – was once known as the CIA of Wall Street because the firm did everything from corporate espionage to the training of foreign armies. A Kroll partner offers counter-terrorism instruction in Saudi Arabia.

Cohen is also a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Cold War propaganda mill and ultraconservative academic base of the late Ray Cline, John Hamre, Admiral Crowe, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former GE CEO Kenneth Langone, Henry Kissinger and other post-911 war profiteers.

Another attendee "of interest" at the 1998 Truman Room conference was Thomas Monath, former chief of the virology division at the SAIC-USAMIID facility at Ft. Detrick, and VP/chief scientific officer at BioVax, since renamed Acimbis.

Monath was a friend of Stephen Hatfill's. He was introduced to Rudolph Giuliani by Jerry Hauer, SAIC scientist and president of Rockefeller University - the fruits of this relationship were the aerial spraying of malathion, resmethrin or sumithrin in the New York City area.9 Nevertheless, the mosquito-borne disease has spread rapidly across the country.

The anthrax scourge also recurs from time to time. An increasingly feasible theory for the origin of Gulf War Syndrome is military experimentation with anthrax vaccines. Were the following incidents further "tests" of anthrax delivery systems by the "counter-terrorists" at SAIC-Ft. Detrick? ...

A) Exposure at a children's hospital – blamed on an "accidental" shipment of live spores from the Southern Research Institute in Frederick, Maryland. (BioPort director David Franz comes from SRI, a leading producer of depleted uranium - Franz worked closely with Bruce Ivins, and would later opine to the press that he found it hard to believe that his colleague was guilty as charged):

Researchers Exposed To AnthraxHealth HighlightsJune 7 - 13, 2004

A possible shipping mistake in late May resulted in at least half a dozen researchers at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute being exposed to live anthrax.

Some of the researchers, working on an anthrax vaccine, handled the live anthrax bacterium and others were present at the time. So far, none have shown any signs of illness. Seven of the workers are taking the antibiotic Cipro as a precautionary measure, the Oakland Tribune reported.

State health officials said there is no risk to other staff or residents living in the area.

The researchers believed they were handling a dead sample of the anthrax bacterium. However, according to hospital officials, the researchers were mistakenly sent live anthrax by the supplier, Southern Research Institute of Frederick, Md.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating the incident.

ANTHRAX, a virulent disease used as a biological weapon, could be responsible for a spate of deaths among heroin addicts in Scotland, it was disclosed yesterday.

Ten heroin users in Glasgow and one in Aberdeen have died of amysterious illness in the past three weeks, which led scientists, who had heard of a similar death in Oslo, to send the victims' blood samples to Porton Down, the biological defence laboratory.

Two of the five tested so far have shown low levels of antibodies to anthrax, suggesting that the addicts were exposed to the disease through a contaminated heroin supply.

Although the results are not conclusive, experts are carrying out testson the others who died and on nine more heroin addicts who have come down with the illness. One survivor still has the black scab that is typical of localised anthrax infection.

David Goldberg, deputy director of the Scottish Centre for Infection and Environmental Health in Glasgow, said that tests were also being made for anthrax spores on heroin batches seized by police in the city.

Meanwhile users were being advised to smoke the drug rather than inject it, and especially not to inject into the muscle.

He believes that the weak results in the anthrax test may be because all the victims were treated with antibiotics before their samples were taken.

The anthrax mailings and the development of vaccines were inseparable projects - these involved animal and human experimentation. On August 3, 2008, USA Today explained the work that Dr. Ivins did at Ft. Detrick, specificially - terminal animal experiments:

"Ivins performed research that required exposing research animals to airborne anthrax, according to a 1998 report in the journal Vaccine. The goal was to test whether a new vaccine could guard against anthrax inhaled in a bioterrorist attack."

The strain of anthrax employed "in Ivins' vaccine experiments was a wet form sprayed into the faces of macaque monkeys through a mask."

In the cover story, crazed, conveniently suicidal Dr. Ivins was the "lone assassin." Clouds of confusion gather around the sacrificial goat and entire covert op (the famed "hall of mirrors" effect) when everyone involved points the finger elsewhere. Dr. Franz steered attention away from the lab:

"Q: Did Ivins and other researchers for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., work with dried anthrax spores?

"A: No, says Col. David Franz, the institute's commander until 1998 and now with the Midwest Research Institute.

"Q: Would Ivins have had the opportunity to make dried anthrax?

"A: Not in the lab, Franz says.

"Q: Did the lab have equipment to produce dried anthrax?

"A: No, Franz says, adding that it would be difficult for Ivins or others to carry out the work without detection."

Dr. David Franz

Colonel David Franz, Ivins' colleague - another Special Forces vet - was a frightfully cheerful "counter-terrorist." (Franz served in the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command for 23 of 27 years on active duty. He served as commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and as deputy commander of the Medical Research and Materiel Command. Prior to joining the Command, he served as group veterinarian for the 10th Special Forces Group, Airborne. Franz was the chief inspector on three United Nations Special Commission biological warfare inspection missions to Iraq and served as technical advisor on long-term monitoring.)Source: http://www.k-state.edu/media/mediaguide/bios/franzbio.html

He told ABC News on April 4, 2002 that a "lot of good" had come of the anthrax attacks. Sad Sacks and Dreary Donnas may tremble because "five people have died, but we've put about $6 billion in our budget."

Thumbs up.

Dr. Charles E. McQueary, per his DoD bio, "former President of General Dynamics Advanced Technology Systems in Greensboro, N.C. He has also been President and Vice President of business units for AT&T, Lucent Technologies, and a Director for AT&T Bell Laboratories. Early in his career at Bell Laboratories, Dr. McQueary served as head of the Missile Operations Department for the SAFEGUARD Antiballistic Missile Test Program. ... Dr. McQueary is a former executive board member of the National Security Industrial Association and the American Defense Preparedness Association (ADPA) (combined to form the National Defense Industrial Association.")Source: http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/biographydetail.aspx?biographyid=119"

A sunny disposition can carry one far in the military hierarchy. Dr. Franz was appointed to the Homeland Security Science and Technology Committee in February 2004 by Dr. Charles E. McQueary - a former president of General Dynamics, undersecretary for science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security.

Biological threats loomed on the horizon, the Pentagon's viral visionaries assured with psychic certainty. Peculiar, though ... read the small print on the packaging and it's clear that the newly emerging diseases and the vaccines created to repel them hung in ... CLUSTERS. Ingri Cassel comments, "Cipro and smallpox vaccine have much in common besides capturing America's urgent attention." Alas, the corporate parents of the companies that produce "these favored elixirs for anthrax and smallpox bioterrorism are linked, strangely enough, to an infamous history involving contaminated blood, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and even the Nazi [ties] that the FBI doesn't seem anxious to explore."

Cipro is manufactured by Germany's Bayer AG, and the smallpox vaccine's newly-incorporated producer is Acambis – formerly OraVax, the West Nile people. "All have jaded histories. The `Big Three' - Bayer, Baxter, and Rhone-Poulenc - are [infamous] for having infected more than 7,000 American hemophiliacs with the AIDS virus during the early 1980s. They admitted foreknowledge in selling HIV-tainted blood clotting products and settled the class action case for $100,000 per claimant."1

Two shrouded power bases of the Third Reich, Bayer and Hoechst, were spun from IG Farben following World War Two. Hermann Schmitz, president of Farben during the war (with its partial control of the Deutsche Bank) "held as much stock in Standard Oil of New Jersey as did the Rockefellers," according to author Paul Manning. He wrote that on August 10, 1944, the Rockefeller-Farben group filtered flight capital through "affiliated German/French, American, British and Swiss banks `for the new Germany.'" These reserves secured "the sophisticated distribution of national and corporate assets to safe havens" across the globe, ensuring the continuation of the "Neuordnung (New Order)" for the petrochemical, drug and banking cartels.2

An upcoming distiller of the said "elixirs," joining BioPort and Bayer, is VaxGen (owned by Genentech ((55.6%-owned by Hoffmann-La Roche (((owned by Roche AG of Switzerland, also an ally of IG Farben and the Reich))).

In November 2004 the company publicized a contract under the auspices of Project BioShield worth $877 million over five years, with the government paying VaxGen to produce 75 million doses of anthrax vaccine. In addition, the company was to receive $123 million in further payments from the government in late 2007.3

And it was just one more hyped boondoggle, if the history of AidsVax, the company's HIV drug failure, is any indication.

On October 3, 1999, the Times of London reported that before VaxGen went public, "the most important government cheerleader for AidsVax" - Dr. William Heyward, head of HIV vaccine research at the CDC - "had a secret deal to join the company." From the CDC, Dr. Heyward "lobbied policymakers and approved $8 million in grants for VaxGen. But the company had already drawn this chart on his future duties, and in January 2000, he joined ex-CDC staffer Dr. Donald Francis, VaxGen president, who also hired former CDC deputy director Dr Walter Dowdle to head its influential data monitoring board."

In US v William L. Heyward, prosecutors charged him with violation of anti-graft laws. Dr. Heyward skipped up the corporate ladder to a VP's desk at VaxGen, but eventually confessed to the flagrant conflict of interest, paid a $32,500 fine, "and escaped a high-profile criminal trial that might have proved devastating to the AidsVax project," the Times reported.

Next thing you knew, on March 17 2003, a class action suit was filed against VaxGen. The lawsuit claimed securities fraud after Dr. Heyward wrote a series of glowing reports on the potential of AidsVax that inflated the stock price but proved baseless when the drug failed in clinical trials.

A word about those "trials": As we shall see, there was little that was "clinical" about them. Testing of the vaccine was sponsored by the NIH, FDA, World Bank, UN agencies and the International Aids Vaccine Initiative.4

The tests were overseen by Dr. Donald Pinkston Francis, president of VaxGen, who, along with molecular biologist Dr. Philip Berman, founded the company in 1995. Dr. Francis, 62, was bestowed with an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Harvard in 1979. Since 1978, he has been chief of the epidemiology division at the Hepatitis Labs Division of the CDC. Under the auspices of the Agency for International Development (AID), he served as an epidemiologist in Rivers State, Nigeria (1971). He was American "epidemiological intelligence service officer" at the CDC (1971-73). In And The Band Played On, Randy Shilts's 1987 Aids book, Dr. Francis is found on no less than 76 pages, a driven, scolding, at times hysterical presence. In the movie, he's played by Full Metal Jacket's Matthew Modine."5

Dr. Leonard Horowitz, an independent authority on public health education and the origins of AIDS, writes that Dr. Francis had "intimate connections to the U.S. Government agencies, programs and people (including Max Essex and Robert Gallo) that CREATED numerous AIDS-like and Ebola-like viruses during the `Special Virus Cancer Program' of the late 1960s and early 1970s..."6

Dr. Francis is one of the instigators of Aids, as Horowitz deconstructs the history of the disease.7

The London Times detailed the "clinical trials" conducted by Dr. Francis's team in Thailand. As Dr. Heyward sees it, "only through such trials will further knowledge be gained". Thumbs up…

... At first glance, Thailand is a strange location to carry out medical trials.... Corruption is de rigeueur, while police are accused by Amnesty International of "extra-judicial killings". Much of its profile relies on sex: first with young women and later with children.

Since the coup, however, quick cheap, experiments on the Thai population have been added to the country's attractions. Dozens of projects are currently in progress, run by foreign pharmaceutical companies and sponsored by the CDC and WHO. With an estimated 800,000 Thais infected with HIV, Aids is the big one, with tests of drugs, immune-system stimulants, and top of the list Francis's AidsVax trial.

It makes sense to test products where the risk of Aids is greatest, but my attention was drawn to potential problems during a conference in a Bangkok hotel. The topic was Aids vaccines. Francis spoke. And a doctor pointed out that some volunteers in an AZT trial were mothers from remote hill tribes. "They come across the border from Burma." he said.

"They don't speak Thai, so there is the question of whether they can understand enough to give informed consent."

The question was brushed aside ("They keep coming back.") and might not have meant much if I hadn't also met an activist from the northern town of Chiang Mai. Despite grilling 11 people who swallowed tablets daily, he complained that he couldn't discover even the name of the product or the pharmaceutical company involved. This man was a former heroin user, so I asked him where VaxGen was recruiting. "Go to Khlong Toei," he said. "By Port Authority Building. That's where they'll get people for the trial."

Khlong Toei is a slum; a sewage-stinking wasteland; a cauldron of disease and drug use. The better-off live in concrete hutches, with wire-fenced windows and balconies. Next down in the social scale are wooden-shack coops on plots of flood-prone ground. Then there are kennels: festering shantytown alleys of plank, sheet-iron and debris sheds. The "streets" are dim corridors, with boardwalk floors, cluttered with children and dogs. At night frail figures shuffle around, suffering from Aids, tuberculosis or both.

Thailand was once praised for anti-HIV efforts in disease hot zones such as this. But evidence suggests that since the 1992 coup priorities have changed. In 1992, a health minister complained that talk about the virus had "seriously affected tourism." And now, official figures show that Aids prevention has been slashed by one third against comparable public health programmes.

The biggest cuts have been in initiatives aimed specifically at drug misusers. "There used to be a project for clean needles in the early 90s, but now it's gone," a spokeswoman for a Khlong Toei charity, the Duang Prateep Foundation, told me....

Nobody could explain the thinking, but the effect on the junkies can be measured. Blood tests reveal that HIV prevalence peaked among female prostitutes in 1993 - when 30% were positive - and has since fallen back to 21%. Among rent boys, prevalence peaked in the following year at 18%, and is now half that figure. But prevalence among heroin-injectors has leapt from 31% in 1994 to a staggering 47% now.

Were these changes evidence that the government were allowing the junkies to be put at greater risk to make them useful for experiments? (Health department officials told me that if AidsVax is marketed, they expect a billion-dollar manufacturing plant.) I couldn't find out. People wouldn't talk when I raised such contentious concerns. Even Bangkok's Medicines Sans Frontieres staff went silent when asked about the trial.

Francis is convinced that nothing is amiss, and his collaborators voice no worries. "All have assured me that this has been done ethically," he told me, when eventually we met. "We are going out of our way not to increase the vulnerability of an already vulnerable population." The trial was conducted in Thailand, he said, for scientific reasons. Different parts of the world are linked with different HIV subtypes, with their myriad subsidiary strains. B subtype strains, for instance, are most common in North America, Europe and Australasia; A, C and D in Africa. In Thailand, there's a mix of B and E strains and, for technical reasons to do with E strains, the company argues that success is more likely there "than anywhere else in the world."

But there are aspects of the project which suggest that the junkies may be involved in an unusual way. A parallel trial among gay men at American clinics is having problems finding and keeping volunteers, due to scepticism towards the venture. But at Kachit's clinics the programme has features which may help to avoid these snags. The junkies get methadone, an oral heroin substitute, plus $10 expenses for each of up to 17 visits. The risk is the appearance of offering drugs and money as inducements to this desperate group.

There's also a feature of the experiment's design that seems self-contradictory. If the methadone liquid got people off injecting heroin, the volunteers' risk of infection would slump and they would be of little use to the vaccine trial. In fact, documents drawn up with the CDC and WHO show that that 7% of clinic users are expected to become HIV-infected each year. So, despite the oral methadone, they keep injecting heroin. They may even buy it with VaxGen's money and have an increased risk of getting Aids.

The logic of the trial creates a dilemma for Francis. The moral uncertainties about using junkies as GUINEA PIGS might be offset by humanity's greater needs. But there would need to be plausible scientific grounds to think that AidsVax might work. And on that the VaxGen experiment is open to even greater doubts. ...

AidsVax cannot give volunteers Aids, but there may be something even more terrifying than the anxiety that it might accelerate their disease if they are later infected with HIV. Some scientists think that, if it works at all, the product may have a dangerous effect on the evolution of HIV. Five years ago, Los Alamos scientists declared that there was "no simple answer" as to whether Aids could become contagious through coughs and sneezes - and other researchers argue that, in much the same way as a partial course of antibiotics can promote resistant bacteria, so a poorly-effective vaccine may promote more deadly and infectious strains.

This may sound like journalistic scare, but HIV's best-understood RNA cousin is influenza virus, which produces devastating mutations every 20 or 30 years. Hepatitis B virus, meanwhile, has already produced mutant strains accepted as being vaccine-induced. "When you use a vaccine, you are introducing another selective pressure," Dr Paul Ewald, professor of biology at Amherst College, Massachusetts, explained. "It could make the problem more damaging, or less damaging, depending on the antigen you use."

Researchers told me that, compared with the potential risks to volunteers, this doomsday scenario was "unlikely". But with agencies standing by to jab hundreds of millions of people, some wondered if, for our species' safety, "unlikely" was reassuring enough. "My personal view," Dr Art Ammann, president of the San Francisco-based Global Strategy for HIV Prevention, and a former AidsVax researcher, said, "is that we could face a global nightmare." ...

This letter from "A Rhodesian" is angry - but that's fine, because it's over an issue that I was aware of and have been meaning to explain. Actually, I understand the writer's rage and would feel the same way in his place - that is, if I also adopted a position of knee-jerk denial concerning Stephen Hatfill's residence in Rhodesia:

"Steven Hatfill was never in the Rhodesian SAS you can go to their website and you will see his name in the roll of dishonour. ... Get your facts right before bursting into print with absolute nonsense." - A Rhodesian

As explained in "Project Anthrax & the Cover-Up," Hatfill WAS in Rhodesia and worked in academia - these details in his resumé were not fabricated and they have been confirmed by the NY Times - sent there on the recommendation of a neo-Nazi. Hatfill boasted that he ran with the Selous Scouts, who were, according to all evidence, responsible for maiing anthrax spores to black areas in Zimbabwe, leading to an outbreak that was devastating to BLACKS exclusively. The SS denies any connection to Hatfill - but they also deny participation in the anthrax outbreak and many other atrocities.

This is not the reason why I'm certain that Hatfill was telling the partial truth, however - one of whom wrote to inform me directly that he doesn't remember a Stephen Hatfill.

I don't doubt it. Hatfill worked in labs on bio-chemical and medical projects, as he did later at Ft. Detrick, and there was no reason for him to have any contact whatsoever with foot soldiers. The SS vets who disavow knowing Hatfill are telling the truth.

Example: Why should James Bond necessarily have personal knowledge of the lab technicians who concocted his sleeping-gas cologne?

The sensitivity of his work ensured that he kept it under wraps and spun cover stories, told half-truths.

Please consider, as I did in writing the story: It is far too "coincidental" that Hatfill, who WAS in the area where the first round of anthrax mailing occurred in Africa, should move on to an identical mass murder scenario in the US. ... and have no role in either.

Hatfill was telling the partial truth about his "work" in Rhodesia. But he couldn't very well talk about his participation in prior anthrax mailings, could he? So he slanted a few facts, and this strikes me as far more plausible than the insistence of Rhodesian operatives that he wasn't one of them. Hatfill was a lab tech, so they had no reason to deal with him directly.•••••••UPDATE

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy told FBI Director Robert Mueller during testimony before his committee that he did not believe Army scientist Bruce Ivins acted alone in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

"I believe there are others involved, either as accessories before or accessories after the fact," said the Vermont Democrat who received an anthrax-tainted letter. "I believe that there are others out there. I believe there are others who could be charged with murder."

Mueller had testified earlier that, after reviewing the case file, he was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Ivins was the sole actor in the anthrax mailings that killed five people and sickened others.

"We have looked at every lead and followed every lead to determine whether anybody else was involved, and we will continue to do so," Mueller told Leahy.

During the last two days of testimony, Mueller asserted that the FBI's case against Ivins was solid. Ivins committed suicide in July, and the FBI and Justice Department have released numerous documents relating to the case that suggest Ivins was the anthrax attacker.

A key part of the case rests on the scientific comparison of anthrax Ivins used and anthrax that was mailed. The FBI also has released information that shows Ivins spent numerous hours alone in one of the biohazard suites at Fort Detrick in the months and days before the anthrax mailings.

Mueller has said the FBI will work with the National Academy of Science to have an independent review on the case.

When Leahy asked whether anthrax was produced at other locations besides defense contractor Battelle Ohio and at the military's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, Mueller confirmed that there were 15 labs in the United States and three overseas that had the ability to produce the Ames strain.

"It should be a concern of all Americans that biological weapons were used on the Congress and the American people," Leahy said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, also pushed for the FBI to release more information on the investigation, noting, "Given all the time and money sunk into this investigation, I believe the American people deserve more than just a press conference and a few briefings."